


always some hope in denial

by quentintarrantino



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 07:25:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17320577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quentintarrantino/pseuds/quentintarrantino
Summary: She always finds him in her dreams, places she’s never been but feels as though a piece of her has been waiting there to be found.





	always some hope in denial

**Author's Note:**

> i'm ashamed at how long this sat half done on my google docs. it's still basically half done but what can i say.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away a man left a little boy on a desert planet. He leaves a girl now, in a different but equally bleak place. No one will ever know it is he who placed her there, but it’s important nonetheless. 

\--

She always finds him in her dreams, places she’s never been but feels as though a piece of her has been waiting there to be found. Side by side they sit atop a dune, watching two suns sink miserably into the sand. As day turns to night he shifts, black tunic stark against the maroon of the landscape. 

_ Are you real? _ The question burns in the back of her mind as they stare off at nothing. She’s afraid to ask it aloud, for fear even this imagined version of Kylo Ren sneer at her for daring to say something so stupid. 

His head turns a fraction and their eyes meet, his impossibly somber. “Are you afraid?” he asks her. 

“Of what?” the reply escapes her before she can even think to formulate a response.

This seems to disappoint him and he resumes watching the sunset.

\--

Master Skywalker becomes aware of the threads before she does. When they meditate together in the afternoon she can feel his gaze boring holes into her. 

He senses that the Force radiates off her like the stones beneath them, deflecting warmth and distorting the air. Only later she will start to feel ghosting fingertips at hers, the second heart beat that seems to echo in her ears when she’s alone. 

_ The Jedi failed because they denied themselves attachments.  _

It’s a poisonous thought, even more dangerous because she knows it’s not her that has pushed it into her mind. She feels him even though he sits light years away from her, the yearning in his chest like an open throbbing wound. 

\--

That first brush of consciousness like a jolt of electricity. She sees his face inches from her and she cries out in the dark not because she is afraid but because the presence is something her first instinct is to cling to. The pieces she’s been missing all this time lie in wait at the end of this strange intangible connection. 

_ Let me help you.  _ She yells into the cavernous space between them. The black rolls and heaves as if it’s a living creature, absorbing her words and delivering his back to her.

_ Your place is here.  _ It’s carries no threats, only the same pain she is coming to recognize in herself. 

As hands begin to reach for her she’ll force herself awake before they can cup her cheek. 

\--

When she was eight the dry season had been harsher than usual and she had been unprepared. The sun had been merciless and she had come to accept that the old AT-AT she had called home would also be her tomb. Waiting for the hunger pains to cease she had fallen asleep only to wake to an old man hunched over with a bottle of water. 

Delirious with thirst she would many times in her life wonder if this had been a hallucination but it had seemed so real at the time. Gulping water greedily at his feet as he watched her with some secret smile and sparkling eyes. “My name is Ben,” he had murmured. “And you are destined for great things my child.” 

Sick and weak from hunger she had succumbed once more to slumber and when she had woken the moon was shimmering away and the stranger had gone. 

\--

In their shared dreamspace he’ll touch her first. His face will be solemn and his hands will be rough. 

_ Are you real? _ She doesn’t know what’s worse, the two of them finding each other in these sacred places or her mind wishing that he could meet her here. 

“They’re calling you the Chosen One.” he mocks, voice silky smooth. She blushes and will try to tug away from him but his hands close tighter than iron around her arm. “They said the same thing about each of us you know.” 

_ Anakin, Luke, Kylo.  _ To say the name he was given at birth seems like a betrayal of the man he once was. 

In the distance sulfur clouds billow, lava flows in thick streams. The heat touches neither of them but the light of the magma casts ugly shadows across their faces. This will be the first time of many she doubts whether there is anything left to salvage.

“I can protect you.” she whispers, eyes watering at how hard his grip is. “Together we can stop all of this right now, no more death. You won’t have to hurt her.” 

She’s seen flashes of those meetings, of the torture and the orders. Only when the links to his past are gone is he free to ascend to the title of Sith. When his mother and uncle fall by his hand he will know true power. 

His eyes will light with rage and he’ll grab her face as though he means to crush her skull but the hold will be as tender as a lover’s embrace. “You are nothing but a child,” Kylo Ren hisses with his lips inches from hers, in the broken voice of a boy undone. 

She will bear those bruises long after she wakes. Her Master will say nothing.

\--

At some point they forget they are enemies. It’s gradual, a tired transition. Every night whether they will it or not they end up face to face. 

In a forest of tall trees she will kiss him, standing as tall as she can while relishing the feeling of his hands at her back.

On a planet of snow and ice they feel no cold as they lay alone on the tundra, words exchanged that mean more than they know.

In an empty city they realize that the threads have grown beyond loose strings connecting and now their minds brush against one another freely. Where one ends the other begins, a seamless shift. 

“We could both leave.” he tells her when they sit on those same dunes and watch the suns set. “Let them fight their wars.”

She wonders that there was ever a time she did not have him with her always, that they sit as game pieces on opposing sides. “We cannot.” she answers and he does not reply because she is right. 

\--

The bond is strong, the Force and her attachment to it is stronger because of him. When she tries to find herself in her meditation there is no singular.

“You will destroy yourself.” it isn’t a warning, only a statement of fact. She looks up to find  General Organa watching with that sharp gaze of hers, her expression tinged with sadness. Her Master looks to her as if she is only another pupil he has failed.

The war grows bitter and her side is losing, on the field she fights and there is talk that the Jedi girl is not who she claims to be. 

Soldiers say they have seen Kylo Ren himself strike down his own men to save her from harm’s way. Stormtroopers whisper that they have seen Skywalker’s Padwan for themselves and she would not raise arms to fight the Knight of Ren. 

“Master,” she cries at her teacher’s door. He has withdrawn from her so completely she cannot even feel him in the Force some days. “Master I am lost.” 

\--

One night she dreams not of Kylo, but of the old man on Jakku. He smiles at her as if no time has passed and she is eight years old again.

“I had a path not unlike yours.” he tells her, a weathered hand still clutching that jug of water. Her mouth is dry. “I was blinded, I let love and duty blur my judgement.” 

The sand shifts outside, lava snakes down the dunes and sulfur smoke bleeds into the air. 

His eyes twinkle but this time it looks more like a sheen of tears. “You will not make the same mistakes I have.” 

\-- 

Just as her Master knows of their bond, so does his. There are things he will not let her see though she begs for him to let her share the burden. 

\--

She meets him where the lava flows in its jagged rivers, the place they’d stood in their dreams. Around them soldiers fight and fall, ships colliding overhead always just out of reach. The air is so warm each breath is a quick and painful endeavor, heat plastering her hair to her forehead.

He’s changing, she sees it in both the bond and his physical form. Agonizingly lean, beneath his robes lay his scars and deeper still his hatred. When they meet in the Force the cruel reality of their predicament is dulled, but now with the embers flying it’s impossible not to feel the darkness that radiates. 

_ I can save you _ , the words don’t even make it across the bond before he’s upon her and the dance begins.

They know each other better than themselves and where each blow falls the other is already there to deflect. Each step forward is countered with a lurch backwards, neither gaining or losing ground while the smoke and soot make their eyes water. 

\--

“How do you think this ends?” a funeral procession in the distance drags along, crowds of people weeping as a goddess sleeps, hair threaded with flowers. He watches the ceremony with resigned acceptance. 

“For us?” she’s always saying the wrong thing. The night glows with soft candle light, the air sweeter than she’s ever breathed. 

“Who do you think will kill who?” never do they discuss what is to come, the brashness shocks her. The safety of the dreamscape ripples, threatened. He holds her hand from where they gaze on, forever passive.  

\--

She’ll cut him down on those rocky banks, the sulfur making her gasp and cough. The hatred in his eyes dulled only by the pain of the lightsaber slicing through his shoulder. In those moments he seems to regain a piece of himself, his hand a vice around the wrist that holds her weapon. 

“Do it.” he urges. 

“Please,” she begs. “There is another way.”  _ there’s always another way.  _ She cannot find him in the Force, only this thick black poison that threatens her as much as it does him now. 

He smiles at her, blood in his teeth because she is nothing but a child and what could a child know of a war like this. 


End file.
